Comment Re:Ummmm (Score 1) 508
That's an interesting twist? You boast of your ability to read 2500 year old Greek texts. But the Chinese are also able to read 2500 year old Chinese texts. So why is your ability a reason for them to discard their ability?
Chinese writing doesn't fit computing very well but only because computing was mostly developed in countries based on the Latin scripts. If the Chinese had developed computing first, then we would be whining about how awful Latin scripts are.
Chinese is no harder to learn then any other language. It takes years but so does English. They have thousands of characters to remember how to write (13000 for traditional writing like in Taiwan and Hong Kong, 7000 for the so called simplified writing used in mainland China from 1950 onwards). Well, you probably had to memorise the spelling of tens of thousands of words. You might argue that English spelling has patterns such as syllables, main roots, prefixes and suffixes. Well , Chinese also has patterns. If you look at a written Chinese character, you can see that they are actually made up of smaller units which are called radicals. 214 radicals are used in almost all words you will come across in daily life. This sounds like a lot compared to 26 letters but radicals correspond to syllables, not letters. How many syllables do you know for English? These radicals are combined in much the same way that English combines syllables. Characters having something to do with wood will usually have the wood radical somewhere within them. If you see a character for the first time, you have a good chance of guessing what it means - at least in a general sense. And Chinese don't change the word according to past/present/future tense like we do (he ran, he is running, he will run). Nor do they modify it for single, dual or multiple like we do (one whiner, two whiners).
Chinese writing doesn't fit computing very well but only because computing was mostly developed in countries based on the Latin scripts. If the Chinese had developed computing first, then we would be whining about how awful Latin scripts are.
Chinese is no harder to learn then any other language. It takes years but so does English. They have thousands of characters to remember how to write (13000 for traditional writing like in Taiwan and Hong Kong, 7000 for the so called simplified writing used in mainland China from 1950 onwards). Well, you probably had to memorise the spelling of tens of thousands of words. You might argue that English spelling has patterns such as syllables, main roots, prefixes and suffixes. Well , Chinese also has patterns. If you look at a written Chinese character, you can see that they are actually made up of smaller units which are called radicals. 214 radicals are used in almost all words you will come across in daily life. This sounds like a lot compared to 26 letters but radicals correspond to syllables, not letters. How many syllables do you know for English? These radicals are combined in much the same way that English combines syllables. Characters having something to do with wood will usually have the wood radical somewhere within them. If you see a character for the first time, you have a good chance of guessing what it means - at least in a general sense. And Chinese don't change the word according to past/present/future tense like we do (he ran, he is running, he will run). Nor do they modify it for single, dual or multiple like we do (one whiner, two whiners).
